Hummingbird Robotics Kit

Kits of materials to create programmable robots

Overview

Hummingbird Robotics Kit is a programmable robotic kit for grades 4-12 students. It aims to teach students a wide variety of subjects, ranging from engineering, to art and english by building and programming robots or kinetic sculptures. Prices for different kits can be found here.

APPROACH

Teachers purchase the Hummingbird Robotics Kit from the company’s website. The complete kit contains controllers, motors, LEDs, adapters and different sensors. Additional details on the exact equipment can be found here.

Students can use the materials in the kit to make their own robot/kinetic sculptures, or follow instructions from projects created by others which can be found here. For example, students may build a robotic Rube Goldberg Machine with different sensors such as light and distance detectors to learn about engineering and science. Students may program the Hummingbird Robotics Kit in multiple languages, from Hummingbird Robotics’ own software, to Scratch, Arduino, Java, or Python. Details can be found here.

The Teacher’s Guide, Lesson Planning Form and Student Guide can all be found here.

IMPLEMENTATION

Hummingbird Robotics suggest one Hummingbird controller and enough parts to build a robot for every 2-3 students. This way students can specialize on programming, construction, and wiring. Each team also needs access to a computer for programming.

The Hummingbird works in Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS.

PRICING

Hummingbird Robotics Kits generally cost $60 to $100 per student user; as parts are re-usable, this can mean $60 to $100 for up to around six students per school year (if each student uses the kit for a month or two). Prices for different kits can be found here. Prices and dates of public training workshops for teachers can be found here.

WHO IS USING IT

As of February 2015, over 10,000 students and teachers in over 100 schools use Hummingbird Robotics Kit.